Texas congressman: CNN reporter was 'disrespectful' to Trump and 'should be fired'

Republican Rep. Randy Weber of Texas tweeted Thursday morning that a CNN reporter he called "disrespectful" to President-elect Donald Trump during a press conference Wednesday "should be fired."

"The CNN reporter who was disruptive to the press briefing, & disrespectful to Trump-should be fired & prohibited from any press briefings," Weber wrote.

Trump on Wednesday blasted a CNN report that said intelligence officials provided briefing materials informing him of the existence of a dossier containing unverified Russian claims of having compromising information about Trump.

Acosta replied that Spicer "threatened to throw me out of that news conference if I asked another question."

Trump claimed during the press conference that CNN "went out of their way to build up" the dossier, which BuzzFeed published in full on Tuesday. Trump also called BuzzFeed "a failing pile of garbage" and said the organization would "suffer the consequences" for publishing the document.

CNN did not publish the full memo as BuzzFeed did. It released a statement standing by its "decision to publish carefully sourced reporting about the operations of our government," which it said was "vastly different than BuzzFeed's decision to publish unsubstantiated memos."

Fox News anchor Shep Smith defended CNN on Wednesday, saying its "correspondents followed journalistic standards and that neither they nor any other journalists should be subjected to belittling and delegitimizing by the president-elect of the United States."